Hold Your Horse Is - Rammin' It Home EP

YesYesYesYes. Fucking Yes. Forget all this review speak.. this band are rapidly approaching the throne of one of the best alternative groups around.

When we first reviewed them ages ago, there was a definite spark, but now they’ve blossomed into an incredibly tight, organised unit that has its own defined sound and place to be. I’m ridiculously excited about the way they’re heading, and will go on about them till my lungs are blue.. or something.

After 3 hours sleep I found myself in Glasgow Airport buying an overpriced tuna cheese melt and iced coffee combo for breakfast, after being given a ticking off for bringing a half-empty deodorant can through security. You’d think that that would be the one thing you’d definitely want to have on a flying tube packed full of people. This was not the beginning of any escape to the sun however, oh no. This was so that we could spend the weekend with Reading trio Yer Beauties, whose EP ‘Come On All The Darling’ we featured a couple of months ago.

When the guys got in touch and told us of their DIY parties held in an old room in a steel factory, along with their plans to record their next track ‘Fashion’ in an abandoned pub-turned-squat in the heart of London, we knew that this was something that had to be seen for ourselves. In person.

After selling out weeks in advance of the weekend, with 26,000 people onsite over the Saturday and Sunday, it’s safe to say that Belladrum (affectionately known as Bella) has become fairly well rooted in the Scottish festival calendar, managing to live up to its crown as the tartan heart.

I’m ashamed to admit that I almost didn’t even go this year. With only a handful of bands like Feeder and Badly Drawn Boy that I wanted to see, as well as suffering a bit of festival fatigue, it seemed less of a hassle to do something else. When plans to head to Nottingham to meet ‘Stop Eject’ came apart at the seams, we decided last minute to head up the road to Beauly after all.

There’s not too many music festivals around that have a single idea or event as their central focal point. More often that not it tends to be a case of the bands on the main-stage being the priority, with any quirks and format changes being tweaked at the edges.

The Wickerman Festival - deep in the gullies of the Scottish borders - reverses that completely. It’s quite simple really: take a big field in the midst of some empty farmland; erect a giant figure ontop of a hill to be burned at the apex of the weekend; get a whole load of people in to drink and listen to some music. Brilliant.

We picked them out back in August of 2009 when we featured their ‘A Small Version Of A Party’ EP, and they’ve gone on to be signed up to the well respected Smalltown America label. With that, comes a new digitaldownload/CD EP release named ‘I Watched It From The Roadside’.

Where would we be today without the simple, scuzzy way of our punk fore-fathers? We certainly owe a great debt to their spikey hair and sneers.
Despite the faded cries that the genre is dead, there are still those who plunder away at the craft regardless. The young amongst us often are set on their path to alternative music fame by two chords and some angry words, so it’s not something to be dismissed lightly. The Pop Fosters are one such two-piece outfit from Wakefield who are carrying such a torch with their 1-2 minute janglings.

Their tag line reads ‘tender pop songs that will melt your ears’, and that pretty much sums it up perfectly. I could just leave you with that and a download link, but that wouldn’t do them justice.

Last time I reviewed this lot, I was impressed by their "double b-side" EP. Listening to their digital single ‘You Show Up’, which is out FREE tomorrow (12th July), I’m even more so.

I knew when I neglected going to see the unknown band with the strange name at T in the Park that I was going to regret it. I just knew they were going to end up being amazing and that I would forever be tormented by my laziness. Sadly, fate had made its decision, and I live with it to this day.

I’d pretty much all but lost hope that you could be in a fresh and credible band without having to resort to more the more obscure methods in the musical sphere. If you didn’t have intricate guitar parts that were tuned at strange angles and inserted in a disjointed fashion, then there was always the risk that you’d fall into that generic-indie trap, and that just would not do.